The 6 Biggest Relationship Deal-Breakers
While waiting for the bus recently, along with about twenty other poor souls, I was somewhat involuntarily subjected to a conversation between a man and a manifestly recent love interest. In a rather harsh tone, he was notifying the woman on the other end of the line (we could all hear both parties publicly negotiating their not so fresh relationship) that he was “no longer going to use lotion”. He went on emphatically: “It was cute at first, but I’m not doing it anymore”.
As the bus was over an hour late, we got to hear many similar exchanges. I found myself reflecting, with some concern, whether this was turning out badly for the woman. He seemed to be making a case that he was being mistreated, a self-professed victim in spite of his aggressive tone, a sign of future gaslighting risk. His next call was to work, saying he was sick and wouldn't be able to come in. He was most evidently hearty and hale.
Evidence-Based Deal-Breakers
A recent article in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (2023) re-analyzes data collected from a prior experiment to distill out key deal-breakers—red flags. The original work (Jonason et al., 2015) identified deal-breakers, without full analysis. Researchers recruited 285 U.S. undergraduate students, 60 percent women, 61 percent European American, 95 percent heterosexual, and 50 percent in a committed relationship, with average age of about 22.
Participants completed two rating scales: the Mate Value Inventory, a 22-item scale of desirable traits rated in terms of how much they agreed a particular trait (e.g. sense of humor) was important to them, and a rating of how open they were in relationships, the Sociosexual Orientation Index. They rated items from a prior 49-item inventory of deal-breakers (see below for full list1), defined as “bits of information you learn about a person that might make you lose interest in the potential partner”.
Researchers used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to find the best fit for the data, deriving a six-factor model. While no judgment is intended, some of the factors are cringy:
Gross, poor hygiene, smelling bad, being unattractive, having health issues like STDS.
Addicted, having an alcohol or substance use problem, cigarette smoking, and having a criminal past.
Clingy, being controlling, clingy, or too jealous.
Promiscuous, having had sex with many other partners and having dated many other people.
Apathetic, being inattentive or uncaring, being untrustworthy, and being dismissive of one’s interests.
Unmotivated, lacking ambition, having limited financial prospects, being too passive about life, and having different moral views than oneself.
For both men and women considering long-term relationships, Apathetic was the strongest red flag, followed by Gross, Clingy, Addicted, Unmotivated, and Promiscuous. For shorter-term relationships, women and men rated Gross as the biggest deal-breaker, followed by Clingy, Apathetic, and then Unmotivated. However, in the short-run, women rated Unmotivated as less appealing than Promiscuous, whereas men rated Promiscuous as worse than Unmotivated.
Women overall had stronger deal-breaker ratings than men, thought to reflect the greater investment women generally make (e.g. child-bearing and rearing). Women have more on the line in mate choice than do men, on average. Age was a factor for women only; correlation with Gross and Unmotivated increased somewhat among older participants.
Those open to uncommitted sex had weaker correlations with all the red flags, except for Clinginess in long-term relationships. More strongly ranked Mate Value was associated with more robust red-flag ranking, suggesting that those who seek more from partners are likely to avoid deal-breakers with greater vigor.
From Deal-Breaking to Deal-Making
Researchers note that much of the prior dating research has focused on what people want (such as these eleven key traits most desired in long-term partners), rather than what they don't want. Preferably, red flags are caught early on—and not after a significant bond is formed.
Uncertainty around ability to catch deal-breakers early, or address them effectively when they are detected, is a source of considerable distress, especially for those who have difficulty ending relationships due to anxious attachment style, fears of loss or loneliness, conflict avoidance, difficulty with relatedness or emotions, unhealthy dependency patterns, fears of abandonment, or other reasons.
There’s a healthy tendency to present ourselves more positively at the beginning of a relationship—it's not a bug, it's a feature. Many would be turned off by someone who doesn't self-enhance at all or is even excessively self-deprecating. At the other end, strategically hiding significant glitches in order to hook someone before they find out what's really happening is a hallmark of potentially harmful individuals, with elevated dark-triad personality traits.
The dark tiad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and sociopathy (Brewer et al, 2023) have been associated with relationship termination in nasty ways—including the use of avoidance (“ghosting”), manipulation, confrontation, and “cost escalation”, a brutal approach where breaking up is accomplished by making being together increasingly painful.
How to do relationships right remains elusive. People often have a list of what they want, which, on one hand—identifying desirable traits—makes sense,. But it also poses the risk of finding someone who “checks the boxes” without stirring greater attraction or connection. Worse, it could lead to missing obvious red flags either because the other person "looks good" or the "chemistry" is blindly strong.
The way we form relationships may start in adolescence (in addition to roots in our familial relationships and cultural contexts), notably whether we are thoughtful or impulsive, whether we are romantic or realistic, whether we go along with controlling people or resist.
In the best of all possible worlds, this research can help to facilitate positive change for those who significantly raise the red flags. Regardless, in all cases, across the lifespan, it's important to approach relationships wisely, weighing desirable and undesirable factors, getting to know the other person before going all in, grounded in self-knowledge and compassion.
References
1. Dealbreaker characteristics rated by the participants in the short- and long-term contexts:
The person has tattoos.
The person has kids.
The person smokes.
The person has alcohol or drug problem.
The person has anger issues or is abusive.
The person is bad in bed.
The person has a bad attitude.
The person is arrogant.
The person has different “religious” views than me.
The person has different “religious” devotions than me.
The person has a boring personality.
The person is emotionally unstable.
The person has different relationship goals.
The person has different family goals.
The person is unintelligent/uneducated.
The person lacks ambition.
The person is immature.
The person is too jealous.
The person has poor financial prospects.
The person has low social status.
The person is unreliable.
The person is too focused on sex.
The person is a bad communicator.
The person is unattractive.
The person has a criminal past.
The person has health issues like STDs.
The person is infertile (cannot have kids).
The person has committed infidelity in the past.
The person has poor hygiene.
The person has a bad smile.
The person smells.
The person has differing views on morality than me.
The person has dated many others.
The person has had sex with many others.
The person is untrustworthy.
The person is dismissive of my interests.
This person and I have too many personality clashes.
This person and I argue too often.
The person is inattentive/uncaring.
The person is currently dating multiple partners now.
The person is clingy.
The person is already in a relationship/married.
The person is high maintenance.
The person has a differing sexual orientation than me.
The person is racist/bigoted.
The person is too passive about life.
The person does not take care of themselves.
The person is overly flirtatious with others.
The person is controlling.
Zsófia Csajbók, Kaitlyn P. White, Peter K. Jonason, Six “red flags” in relationships: From being dangerous to gross and being apathetic to unmotivated,
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 204, 2023, 112048, ISSN 0191-8869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112048.
Jonason, P. K., Garcia, J. R., Webster, G. D., Li, N. P., & Fisher, H. E. (2015). Relationship dealbreakers: What individuals do not want in a mate. Personality and Social
Psychological Bulletin, 41, 1697–1711.
Gayle Brewer, Madison Parkinson, Alice Pickles, Joshua Anson, Georgia Mulinder, Dark Triad traits and relationship dissolution, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 204, 2023, 112045, ISSN 0191-8869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112045.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Brenner is the co-author of three books Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy, Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships, and the most recent sequel [Feb 2023], Making Your Crazy Work For You: From Trauma and Isolation to Self-Acceptance and Love (Central Recovery Press). In addition, he is the author of the popular Psychology Today blog, ExperiMentations: Reflections on the Human Condition, with nearly 12 million views to date.